Samskara is a Sanskrit word that has many definitions, one of them can be “Mental impressions that flow together”. Similar to ‘neurons that fire together wire together”, a particular way of thinking creates the basis for making the same decisions over and over, sometimes these can become good habits and sometimes they become bad habits.
I highly recommend looking into which negative samskara(s) you are working through in this particular lifetime. How are your thoughts hijacked by a pre-conditioned way of thinking? Discovering & understanding which ones you are working to dissolve during your lifetime will help free up much energy and mental space to move forward in positivity, to create and live a life less self-bombarded with suffering.
By grabbing a hold of what has a hold on you, your spiritual evolution and emotional freedom can happen with greater speed and grace. These samskaras are like subconscious programming that create tendencies to act in a certain way. They are unconscious motivators acted out in what appear as habit. We are often so emotionally attached to thinking a certain way that we have a difficult time viewing objectively where our samskaras are controlling our minds and lives. They bound us to reliving similar situations and circumstances until we become aware of them enough to dissolve them. They set the emotional basis for our storylines and the more we avoid facing them, the more we cause suffering within our experience. The greater our vision is skewed.
Here are the six basic kinds of Samskaras that could be working behind the scenes and holding you back from experiencing a life of joy & freedom. Attachment, aversion, compulsion, identification, addiction and inhibition. Right off the bat after reading these you might already have progressed enough on your spiritual journey to pin point which one(s) is controlling your actions and have been a challenge for you. Inhibiting you from experiencing greater lightness of being. In case you can’t identify with any of them, here is a more in-depth look into what they represent. These all have a much wider definition but for the purpose of this piece I’ve condensed them through my own understanding.
Attachment: The condition of being attached to something outside of oneself. Looking, longing or over-identifying with/through another person or material object. The idea that self-fulfilment and self-love can only be achieved through someone or something beyond ourselves.
Aversion: The habit of avoiding self inquiry and denying one’s needs. Inability to be present with others through their pleasure and pain, included inability to be present with one’s natural array of emotions. Constantly in a state of avoidance, deflection, protection and self-preservation from life.
Compulsion: This occurs when we avoid dealing with emotional or mental trauma for prolonged periods of time. The inability to sit with an issue and work through it, causes it to grow bigger and bigger until it reaches a point where it spreads into multiple symptoms and an over arching dis-ease. When emotional and mental wounds are left unattended to, they literally begin to grow into a tidal wave of emotionally charged behaviour that takes over our lives. This creates compulsive behaviour and causes us to act out despite our personal wishes.
Identification: The over-identification with the body and ego—the flesh suit that represents us— and the persona of who we are. The limited understanding that ego is transient and the body only a drop of the ocean that we are. Our bodies and our identities are not who we are on an infinite level. Our jobs, our roles as mothers or fathers, artists, doctors, spiritual teachers, entrepreneurs, rich or poor, popular or unpopular are all not who we are but rather a role we take on to learn about ourselves. We are all souls behind our earthly personas and an over identification with our bodies and ego roles causes disillusionment of self and suffering both within ourselves and in our actions towards others.
Addiction: Similar to compulsion, addiction happens when we are unable to face the root, the issue causing us to over-consume in the first place. Whether it be an addiction to sex, food, shopping, smoking, drinking, drugs, t.v, video-games, you name it, addictions are all symptoms of unhealed trauma and pain. Our over consumption of them becomes our way of escaping self-inquiry and doing the work to heal the underlying issues.
Inhibition: Similar to self-aversion, inhibition is the over-restriction of one’s natural expression. It is the unnecessary restraint one places on themselves that inhibits their natural state of being. The need to control one’s actions and limit one’s expression. Restricting one’s authentic expression of thoughts and feelings in fear of judgment and ridicule.
I believe we can have one major samskara that predominates our experience but we can also have many all interconnected, wiring and firing together. Dealing with the major one helps to untangle the others. Here are some tips on how to work towards dissolving samskaras.
Intention as Jospeh Campbell once said is ‘our call to awaken’. This intention to deepen our awareness and lighten our load becomes our call to action. Only from this point can we begin our journey of self-inquiry and dismantle our samskaras.
After setting intention our next step is becoming self-aware and present with one’s feelings and emotional patterns. How can we become aware of our subconscious patterns if we never turn the microscope on self and move inwards to take a peek? We need to take time to self-reflect and we need to be self-observant throughout our day as we interact with others, detachment is key.
We can not begin to objectively see ourselves if we are fixated on self-perfection. It is only within the softening of self-criticism that we can begin to acknowledge where we are controlled by a pattern that lies deeper than surface appearances. Once we find ourselves open and loving to our negative self-inflicting aspects can we begin to drum up the courage and become interested in overcoming those obstacles.
Breaking through personal barriers requires more than courage, it also requires that we become self-controlled. We need to be determined in our undertakings to free ourselves from limiting behaviours. Once we know what it is we are up against internally, self control, self-regulation and moderation are a key ingredient to moving through and eradicating pre-conditioned behaviour. Sounds challenging but don’t worry, once self-awareness finally steeps in, it’s almost impossible to avoid the truth, which leads to mucho motivation to get on with the show towards greater joy and self-freedom. And let’s face it, who doesn’t want to experience greater freedom and joy!
Artwork by The Real Eye to See
So good❤